Gold Inflation and What Can Be Done

Necrotech_Master · March 2022

dvonpm wrote: »

Just a reminder for anyone complaining about inflation and guild dues.

You can

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

Carrying on from @Tommy_The_Gun 's thinking, basically there is a whole segment of the player base who will not use the current selling mechanics but who, if they did have access to the selling side of the economy, would contribute vastly to increasing the supply of items, at which point you could expect the price of more common materials to become more sane relative to what they are used for AND you could plug those players into the economy so that they did not experience so much inflation.

For whatever reason, ZOS has made clear multiple times that a central auction house is not going to be a thing and the guild traders are here to stay. So be it.

But why not an auction house minus?

- You have "emporia" or something at various key cities, or even at bad locations, that are functionally similar to guild stores but are *open to every player and nothing to do with guilds*.

- Each player gets a very limited number of selling slots to stop the emporia completely overtaking the guild stores that ZOS want to preserve.

- If you like, sales at emporia attract a tax to disadvantage them compared to guild stores.

I do not think guild stores are a good idea, least of all for a game like ESO which deliberately courted and courts a non-diehard MMO playerbase. But, plainly, the view is that they are sacred. But the game really, really needs a mechanic to allow players who want nothing to do with guild stores to sell.

Whole game mechanics depend on the player economy to work properly. Most obviously housing and the crafting of furnishings have been aimed at single players and fail the fun test if it takes players literally years to do what they are trying to do. If they fail the fun test, people will stop playing. And while it might seem terribly clever to charge the equivalent of over 70 pounds (in the UK) to someone for a house and then drive them to the Crown store to spend 5 pounds a pop on plants, it isn't in the end. It's exploitative, players will not engage with it and will resent it, and those players will leave.

Spamming zone chat with "WTS" is a joke solution to the problem.

OK, I am going to give this an honest effort. For this idea to work the emporium(s) need to be inferior to guild traders in multiple ways so that it doesn't interfere with how they function. Also, for this to work there has to be strong limits or it could crash the game. So how about we say this.

30 item listing limit per week per account. Items once listed can not be canceled for 3 days. Items expire at 14 days.

To sell in the emporium you must pay a flat fee of 100k gold weekly.

Listing fee is 14% of the sale price, none of which is returned upon cancelation.

Fees and gold are removed from the game.

Something along these lines. Are conditions that would need to be met. The guild stores need to have an appeal to them and on the other side the system would need to be able to limit how many players can sell, how much, and the frequency. The very real reason for this is that too much of it at once will crash the system. It's something that needs to be addressed before venturing outside of the established system.

while this is an interesting idea, this is just another example of how it would cut out "the poor player"

if you cant afford to "rent" your emporium slot, you would still be relegated to "WTS" zone spam anyway

i see this as almost the exact same thing as a guilds that demand dues to join (which i also greatly dislike)

I mean, those dues are a gold sink. It's just that your guilds have to wheedle it out of you by begging for it.

How are guilds supposed to cover 20-60 million bids per week if no one pays for it?

Raffles, auctions, and 3.5% taxes from sales don't cover it and I'm not sure how fair it is to ask a few of us to continually struggle to cover these costs so you don't have to experience the sinking of your gold while reaping the benefits of a costly trading spot.

im not saying i like the whole trader bidding process either, actually i would also prefer the global auction house style system and just have to pay the fees to list the item

because of TTC, i feel the actual trader spot is less relevant as long as someone in the guild uses TTC to scan and upload it so someone searching could find it

i remember back in the day when there was NO traders and you could only sell "in house"

i usually on avg make around 50-100k a day combined from the 5 guilds im in (at least 1 does not regularly have a trader), this totals to around 400-500k total for a trading week so im not like getting super rich quick (usually about 200-300k coming from 1 guild, and in this same guild there are people who sell 10 million gold worth of items every week, and i always wonder how do they sell that much unless they are either A) a flipper, B ) spend most of their time farming "new" drops like the fargrave designs being the latest "new" thing)

if i had to eat 100k of my profits every week just buying a trade slot, i would probably just stop selling stuff entirely and just turn into a hoarder (i dislike WTS spam so i dont do that kind of thing)

Xebov · March 2022

Quoted post has been removed.

Many games have a currency exchange where players can offer one of the currency to exchange to the other, but both currencies are supplied by players. I dont know a single game where the game company supplies the shop currency to sink in game currency out of the game. Its effectively just like the current crown selling, just with a more secure mechanic and you would get crowns instead of items.

Xebov · March 2022

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

because of TTC, i feel the actual trader spot is less relevant as long as someone in the guild uses TTC to scan and upload it so someone searching could find it

TTC only becomes important on higher value low supply items. Like certain set pieces or older motifs. Hardly anone will use it just to save 10g on some Wax.

dvonpm · March 2022

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

dvonpm wrote: »

How are guilds supposed to cover 20-60 million bids per week if no one pays for it?

I might be wrong, but to me the secret & random "bidding" mechanics looks like something that was supposed to force um... "randomness" - to give every guild a chance to find a trading spot, keep it for a while and then move to a next random vendor NPC. So there would be a rotation. If one would try to perma-take one spot... then yeah, prices for that spot (bids) will go higher & higher over time. So if guilds are trying to pass on some of the costs of them perma-taking one spot to "customers" (buyers) - then yes, prices will go up.

I think it was supposed to increase competitiveness and be a sort of naturally increasing sink over time, honestly it's not the worst gold sink idea. And humans are creatures of habit, the devs know this. No one is going to want to be in wildly different places each week. Not with a 30 day list time.

It's just that requires people to decide to do it, and if you are in a no dues guild you can choose not to sink your gold while still being able to profit.

I don't have any solutions to the problem, but I do get tired of scrambling every week to cover guild 5-10% of the guild bid out of my own pocket and now here's a whole 9 page thread of people complaining about not having good sinks - not gonna lie I kinda want to just scream into the void lol

Anyway - the trader sink is working great for me, I never get ahead and things only just ever cost more lol (do I sound bitter XD)

Northwold · March 2022

.

Xebov wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

because of TTC, i feel the actual trader spot is less relevant as long as someone in the guild uses TTC to scan and upload it so someone searching could find it

TTC only becomes important on higher value low supply items. Like certain set pieces or older motifs. Hardly anone will use it just to save 10g on some Wax.

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, TTC's influence has been as much on the sell as the buy side. You wouldn't be saving just 10g on wax if TTC didn't exist because there would be real price variation. That is one of the arguments that was used for having guild traders in the first place. That there would not be full price transparency and people would thus have to go shopping because there would be price variation.

It's really not a good argument. If it was a good idea and a type of gameplay that anyone would remotely enjoy TTC would not be a thing. But that is partly what guild traders were supposed to be about, and, indeed, TTC HAS made the well located traders more important because price competition effectively no longer exists (not least because any time anyone attempts it flippers hoover up anything that doesn't get bought for use and relist it at the acceptable, homogeneous price), so people will go wherever is most convenient.

dvonpm · March 2022

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

dvonpm wrote: »

Just a reminder for anyone complaining about inflation and guild dues.

You can

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

Carrying on from @Tommy_The_Gun 's thinking, basically there is a whole segment of the player base who will not use the current selling mechanics but who, if they did have access to the selling side of the economy, would contribute vastly to increasing the supply of items, at which point you could expect the price of more common materials to become more sane relative to what they are used for AND you could plug those players into the economy so that they did not experience so much inflation.

For whatever reason, ZOS has made clear multiple times that a central auction house is not going to be a thing and the guild traders are here to stay. So be it.

But why not an auction house minus?

- You have "emporia" or something at various key cities, or even at bad locations, that are functionally similar to guild stores but are *open to every player and nothing to do with guilds*.

- Each player gets a very limited number of selling slots to stop the emporia completely overtaking the guild stores that ZOS want to preserve.

- If you like, sales at emporia attract a tax to disadvantage them compared to guild stores.

I do not think guild stores are a good idea, least of all for a game like ESO which deliberately courted and courts a non-diehard MMO playerbase. But, plainly, the view is that they are sacred. But the game really, really needs a mechanic to allow players who want nothing to do with guild stores to sell.

Whole game mechanics depend on the player economy to work properly. Most obviously housing and the crafting of furnishings have been aimed at single players and fail the fun test if it takes players literally years to do what they are trying to do. If they fail the fun test, people will stop playing. And while it might seem terribly clever to charge the equivalent of over 70 pounds (in the UK) to someone for a house and then drive them to the Crown store to spend 5 pounds a pop on plants, it isn't in the end. It's exploitative, players will not engage with it and will resent it, and those players will leave.

Spamming zone chat with "WTS" is a joke solution to the problem.

OK, I am going to give this an honest effort. For this idea to work the emporium(s) need to be inferior to guild traders in multiple ways so that it doesn't interfere with how they function. Also, for this to work there has to be strong limits or it could crash the game. So how about we say this.

30 item listing limit per week per account. Items once listed can not be canceled for 3 days. Items expire at 14 days.

To sell in the emporium you must pay a flat fee of 100k gold weekly.

Listing fee is 14% of the sale price, none of which is returned upon cancelation.

Fees and gold are removed from the game.

Something along these lines. Are conditions that would need to be met. The guild stores need to have an appeal to them and on the other side the system would need to be able to limit how many players can sell, how much, and the frequency. The very real reason for this is that too much of it at once will crash the system. It's something that needs to be addressed before venturing outside of the established system.

while this is an interesting idea, this is just another example of how it would cut out "the poor player"

if you cant afford to "rent" your emporium slot, you would still be relegated to "WTS" zone spam anyway

i see this as almost the exact same thing as a guilds that demand dues to join (which i also greatly dislike)

I mean, those dues are a gold sink. It's just that your guilds have to wheedle it out of you by begging for it.

How are guilds supposed to cover 20-60 million bids per week if no one pays for it?

Raffles, auctions, and 3.5% taxes from sales don't cover it and I'm not sure how fair it is to ask a few of us to continually struggle to cover these costs so you don't have to experience the sinking of your gold while reaping the benefits of a costly trading spot.

im not saying i like the whole trader bidding process either, actually i would also prefer the global auction house style system and just have to pay the fees to list the item

because of TTC, i feel the actual trader spot is less relevant as long as someone in the guild uses TTC to scan and upload it so someone searching could find it

i remember back in the day when there was NO traders and you could only sell "in house"

i usually on avg make around 50-100k a day combined from the 5 guilds im in (at least 1 does not regularly have a trader), this totals to around 400-500k total for a trading week so im not like getting super rich quick (usually about 200-300k coming from 1 guild, and in this same guild there are people who sell 10 million gold worth of items every week, and i always wonder how do they sell that much unless they are either A) a flipper, B ) spend most of their time farming "new" drops like the fargrave designs being the latest "new" thing)

if i had to eat 100k of my profits every week just buying a trade slot, i would probably just stop selling stuff entirely and just turn into a hoarder (i dislike WTS spam so i dont do that kind of thing)

Yeah all reasonable points. Guild set their dues much lower than the actual cost though. It's sort of like baseline from everyone (who participates) and then you supplement with the raffles and auctions where the higher donators and officers make up the difference.

Like that's generally good a thing - the low dues mean everyone has a sink but the actual cost is being paid by people who can afford it.

In theory

I eat a full 1-1.5 million of my profits every week to put toward our trader bids and I usually only sell about 2 million on a good week. Hence my desire to scream into voids when I see people complaining about not having enough sinks, because I could seriously use some help!

Korinth · March 2022

Lady_Galadhiel wrote: »

More gold sinks yes but as mentioned, now charging for upgrading your armor would hurt the new players much more than the ones who play for a longer time.
You could see millions and millions of gold disappear from the game if ZOS would add an option to exchange gold for crowns.That would make a difference because just adding a few minor gold sinks here and there won't have much if any impact.

THIS!!!!

If ZoS starts charging more gold to upgrade armor, change CPs, or anything else with character looks, gear upgrades, or swapping between PvE and PvP (CPs)...Im outta here. I think its stupid to have to pay gold for things like this anyway as it discourages new players.

Xebov · March 2022

Northwold wrote: »

.

Xebov wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

because of TTC, i feel the actual trader spot is less relevant as long as someone in the guild uses TTC to scan and upload it so someone searching could find it

TTC only becomes important on higher value low supply items. Like certain set pieces or older motifs. Hardly anone will use it just to save 10g on some Wax.

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, TTC's influence has been as much on the sell as the buy side. You wouldn't be saving just 10g on wax if TTC didn't exist because there would be real price variation. That is one of the arguments that was used for having guild traders in the first place. That there would not be full price transparency and people would thus have to go shopping because there would be price variation.

It's really not a good argument. If it was a good idea and a type of gameplay that anyone would remotely enjoy TTC would not be a thing. But that is partly what guild traders were supposed to be about, and, indeed, TTC HAS made the well located traders more important because price competition effectively no longer exists (not least because any time anyone attempts it flippers hoover up anything that doesn't get bought for use and relist it at the acceptable, homogeneous price), so people will go wherever is most convenient.

Players in guilds mostly use guild sales data through ATT and MM to make their prices and if they want to sell high volume items, like golden upgrade materials or resources, they simply look up the current cheapest price in the guild and undercut it by 1g. This also causes prices to vary alot from day to day, you can see 10%+ regularly. TTC is realy only used if there is no other data available. That also makes sense given that TTC has no real time data and contains no actual sales data.

FineFeathered · March 2022

Northwold wrote: »

Xebov wrote: »

You can also play other MMOs and still would have to spend time to find the right guild for you. So where exactly is the issue?

Well that's not actually the case for selling things, no.

The issue with ESO is the lack of a central auction house. And that is where ESO has put up its stall so it's unlikely to change. But it does create problems.
.

After coming from a game where a pair of gloves i needed was 42 million, becauseit had a central auction house, I could not disagree more strongly. And the few months I played in Wow also bore that out. Without help from a long time player, I could not afford basic clothes because the traders on the central auction house manipulated all the prices, and simply bought up everything that was lower.

I have seen it in action, and I can honestly say, the very fact that the stores are decentralized has STOPPED the ridiculous inflation seen in other games like Wow and wow-like games. And I am absolutely sure of what I speak, because it is first hand experience and having friends who only log on to play the markets.

The guild based system as it is now is a far superior option because it keeps people from cornering the entire market on an y single item, meaning that it is possible to find almost anything in game for a reasonable price, without worrying that some yahoo just sits and waits for it to pop up cheap, buy it up and resell it for millions.

Central Auction houses have ruined other games economies. This game is a vastly superior option. It may not be perfect, but it stops those who only sit and buy and sell, and do nothing else. THEY are the inflation causers. Not people who are buying something to use it.

If you wish to disagree, please, bring facts to the table.

Zyva · March 2022

I'm just going to say, the Witcher found a decent gold sink in brothels <.< .... >.>

Freelancer_ESO · March 2022

FineFeathered wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

Xebov wrote: »

You can also play other MMOs and still would have to spend time to find the right guild for you. So where exactly is the issue?

Well that's not actually the case for selling things, no.

The issue with ESO is the lack of a central auction house. And that is where ESO has put up its stall so it's unlikely to change. But it does create problems.
.

After coming from a game where a pair of gloves i needed was 42 million, becauseit had a central auction house, I could not disagree more strongly. And the few months I played in Wow also bore that out. Without help from a long time player, I could not afford basic clothes because the traders on the central auction house manipulated all the prices, and simply bought up everything that was lower.

I have seen it in action, and I can honestly say, the very fact that the stores are decentralized has STOPPED the ridiculous inflation seen in other games like Wow and wow-like games. And I am absolutely sure of what I speak, because it is first hand experience and having friends who only log on to play the markets.

The guild based system as it is now is a far superior option because it keeps people from cornering the entire market on an y single item, meaning that it is possible to find almost anything in game for a reasonable price, without worrying that some yahoo just sits and waits for it to pop up cheap, buy it up and resell it for millions.

Central Auction houses have ruined other games economies. This game is a vastly superior option. It may not be perfect, but it stops those who only sit and buy and sell, and do nothing else. THEY are the inflation causers. Not people who are buying something to use it.

If you wish to disagree, please, bring facts to the table.

I'd absolutely agree with you that central auction houses can allow players to manipulate the market for gain.

However, I think at least on PC the amount of unfairness in the current market is greater.

ESO has around 200 Guild Traders . At a maximum, each trader can sell 15,000 items. This means that at a maximum amount of items you can have for sale in the game in Guild Traders is three million. (Quartermasters can drive the number a bit higher but, realistically this is far outweighed by all of the guilds with traders without 500 members and without listings)

While this setup does motivate players with lots of goods and not many slots to sell goods at reasonable prices to be able to refill their slots it doesn't always work and you will see some players listing items far above the actual value in the hope that the item will sell eventually at a vast premium. It also can produce a position where certain goods aren't listed much at all.

I don't bother listing anything below CP 160 because it's probably not going to sell in a timely manner for a high enough value to be worth the slot to me. This in turn leaves many lower level players with characters that get worse before CP 160 because they can't get gear to compensate for the gradual loss of stats from the low level bonuses going away. I've looked on several of the characters I've leveled and the supply of low level gear that is accessible at low level traders is incredibly limited and priced high enough that the characters can't actually afford it without drawing money from other characters.

As only around three million goods can be sold at a time the supply of goods is limited which in turn can drive up prices.

Right now, whenever I go to buy or sell an item that I think is worth more than 5,000 gold I go to TTC's website and look it up. The only time anyone gets a great deal on a price buying an item from me is when I don't look an item up on TTC because I don't think its worth much and I'm wrong. I occasionally get great deals from looking things up on TTC but, most of the time the items that are actually cheap have already sold to someone else.

TTC and the other addons have effectively made it so that the market on PC is acting like a lousy central market that transfers money from people that aren't using TTC/Addons much/ at all to people that are using TTC/Addons lots and creates a significant number of wealthy people that are willing to pay higher prices for goods.

The current market design has also produced an environment where it is profitable for people to offer to buy goods under the market price in chat to resell them on the market as many new players don't have access to the market and thus are either unaware of the market price or willing to take the hit. Every time I'm in a new player area I'm met with messages trying to buy at below market prices.

I'm not familiar enough with the console gameplay to know if the system is working better on consoles as they don't have the influence of addons impacting things.

Changing the system of how items are sold could also have a significant social impact on the game so if it's done at all it should be done carefully.

Right now, the two active guilds I am in are relaxed trading guilds with social aspects that have hundreds of people in them. I haven't really gotten terribly involved with either beyond occasionally helping people/talking on chat but, if I needed help with nearly anything in game I could probably get it. If the game changed to having a central market system on PC, it's likely many of the trading guilds would rapidly bleed players which might cause further players to quit. The gameplay experience could change a bit if players started to shift towards smaller guilds both in that guilds might be closer knit and that the amount of content people could complete without help from outside the guild would potentially drop. Players might become more helpful to players outside of their guild because they themselves might need more help from outside the guild or players might become sick of players asking for help on zone chat and help less frequently.

My impression is also that the inflation in games frequently is a product of unintended activities/unintended results.

For example, SWTOR has massive amounts of inflation and a significant portion of that traces back to exploits that occurred where players exploited to get massive sums and then bought up every item on the market and the developers didn't roll the event back. This left both exploiters and some regular players massively wealthy with a limited amount of goods to buy which skyrocketed prices.

Uvi_AUT · March 2022

targario wrote: »

hey dear community,

as everyone knows there is a crazy amounts of gold inflation in the game and i want to talk why this is a bad thing for "casual players"(as zos proved that they care casuals more) and my suggestions to fix this.

inflation is bad for new and casual players because it will fear them, the millions of gold is need to get some new items or upgrading stuff. jewelry upgrading was pricey even before this infilation and now its way worse.

what can be done?

well, zos needs to add some mechanics or activities that should require some gold from the players.

Examples: (all below just random thoughs, and prices can be changed accordingly)

Upgrading should ask for some gold:
Blue to Purple, usual mats + 10k gold
Purple to Yellow, usual mats + 100k gold

Outfit system should require for more gold:
500 gold is now 5k
1k gold is now 10k
3k gold is now 30k

Transmutating should require more gold.

and obviously daily writs should give less money, or maybe less for multiple characters.

I would like to hear your thoughts on this subject, and what other things could be done about this problem?

good days.

So what youre saying is "Tax the Poor"?

maxjapank · March 2022

Absolutely no to a Central Auction system. ESO did this right from the start. Yes, it's a bit tedious to list things and travel about. But it does get people moving around in the world which brings more "life" to the game. Only allowing you to list up to 30 items is limiting. But it reduces the amount any one player can control the entire market. It also means that you cannot run some sort of addon that just buys everything up and relists it. Can you just imagine bots taking over the market in ESO?

Runefang · March 2022

dvonpm wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

dvonpm wrote: »

Just a reminder for anyone complaining about inflation and guild dues.

You can

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

Carrying on from @Tommy_The_Gun 's thinking, basically there is a whole segment of the player base who will not use the current selling mechanics but who, if they did have access to the selling side of the economy, would contribute vastly to increasing the supply of items, at which point you could expect the price of more common materials to become more sane relative to what they are used for AND you could plug those players into the economy so that they did not experience so much inflation.

For whatever reason, ZOS has made clear multiple times that a central auction house is not going to be a thing and the guild traders are here to stay. So be it.

But why not an auction house minus?

- You have "emporia" or something at various key cities, or even at bad locations, that are functionally similar to guild stores but are *open to every player and nothing to do with guilds*.

- Each player gets a very limited number of selling slots to stop the emporia completely overtaking the guild stores that ZOS want to preserve.

- If you like, sales at emporia attract a tax to disadvantage them compared to guild stores.

I do not think guild stores are a good idea, least of all for a game like ESO which deliberately courted and courts a non-diehard MMO playerbase. But, plainly, the view is that they are sacred. But the game really, really needs a mechanic to allow players who want nothing to do with guild stores to sell.

Whole game mechanics depend on the player economy to work properly. Most obviously housing and the crafting of furnishings have been aimed at single players and fail the fun test if it takes players literally years to do what they are trying to do. If they fail the fun test, people will stop playing. And while it might seem terribly clever to charge the equivalent of over 70 pounds (in the UK) to someone for a house and then drive them to the Crown store to spend 5 pounds a pop on plants, it isn't in the end. It's exploitative, players will not engage with it and will resent it, and those players will leave.

Spamming zone chat with "WTS" is a joke solution to the problem.

OK, I am going to give this an honest effort. For this idea to work the emporium(s) need to be inferior to guild traders in multiple ways so that it doesn't interfere with how they function. Also, for this to work there has to be strong limits or it could crash the game. So how about we say this.

30 item listing limit per week per account. Items once listed can not be canceled for 3 days. Items expire at 14 days.

To sell in the emporium you must pay a flat fee of 100k gold weekly.

Listing fee is 14% of the sale price, none of which is returned upon cancelation.

Fees and gold are removed from the game.

Something along these lines. Are conditions that would need to be met. The guild stores need to have an appeal to them and on the other side the system would need to be able to limit how many players can sell, how much, and the frequency. The very real reason for this is that too much of it at once will crash the system. It's something that needs to be addressed before venturing outside of the established system.

while this is an interesting idea, this is just another example of how it would cut out "the poor player"

if you cant afford to "rent" your emporium slot, you would still be relegated to "WTS" zone spam anyway

i see this as almost the exact same thing as a guilds that demand dues to join (which i also greatly dislike)

I mean, those dues are a gold sink. It's just that your guilds have to wheedle it out of you by begging for it.

How are guilds supposed to cover 20-60 million bids per week if no one pays for it?

Raffles, auctions, and 3.5% taxes from sales don't cover it and I'm not sure how fair it is to ask a few of us to continually struggle to cover these costs so you don't have to experience the sinking of your gold while reaping the benefits of a costly trading spot.

im not saying i like the whole trader bidding process either, actually i would also prefer the global auction house style system and just have to pay the fees to list the item

because of TTC, i feel the actual trader spot is less relevant as long as someone in the guild uses TTC to scan and upload it so someone searching could find it

i remember back in the day when there was NO traders and you could only sell "in house"

i usually on avg make around 50-100k a day combined from the 5 guilds im in (at least 1 does not regularly have a trader), this totals to around 400-500k total for a trading week so im not like getting super rich quick (usually about 200-300k coming from 1 guild, and in this same guild there are people who sell 10 million gold worth of items every week, and i always wonder how do they sell that much unless they are either A) a flipper, B ) spend most of their time farming "new" drops like the fargrave designs being the latest "new" thing)

if i had to eat 100k of my profits every week just buying a trade slot, i would probably just stop selling stuff entirely and just turn into a hoarder (i dislike WTS spam so i dont do that kind of thing)

[snip]

In theory I eat a full 1-1.5 million of my profits every week to put toward our trader bids and I usually only sell about 2 million on a good week. Hence my desire to scream into voids when I see people complaining about not having enough sinks, because I could seriously use some help!

Gold sinks work best when its forced on players, people don't want to voluntarily give up gold. Double the tax for using the trader, I honestly wouldn't notice and it wouldn't stop me using a trader.

FineFeathered · March 2022

Runefang wrote: »

Gold sinks work best when its forced on players, people don't want to voluntarily give up gold. Double the tax for using the trader, I honestly wouldn't notice and it wouldn't stop me using a trader.

I would notice. All active sellers would notice. The tax is already high, and the price to trade guilds to keep a trader in a prime location means people like me (and I am in 2 premium trade guilds), the cost of keeping those traders in capital cities near wayshrines or entrances is ridiculous. Yes, we can sell our items at a premium there because people want "easy" and "fast." They are willing to pay for that. I farm for my own materials to sell, or I sell things that have dropped (but are not bound). And nothing in the lvl 50 cp1 to cp 159. For chars in that, I highly recommend they get involved ina friendly guild (I am in a few of those too) where people will help others to craft for them. Sometimes for free. Sometimes for mats.

When those people spam new player areas with their 1/2 price offers to buy, I usually post the MM price of the items and show that they can be sold for far more than the people/scammers are offering. It doesn't stop them, but it stops some people from selling to them and they ask what their options are. I suggest finding a friendly, non-hard core trade guild that maintains a store in a less competitve place (like not Deshann, not Wayrest, and some of the other capitols that you find. Yes. those are expensive stores to sell in, which makes dues, raffles, high sales a requirement so the guild can keep bidding those ridiculous amounts to keep the vendor. It's a vicious cycle.

I wish I knew what more to do, but so long as there is individual greed, and group greed, there will be problem such as inflation and scamming. And I don't see human nature changing at all over time...so it's something we just have to deal with until humans change. Still, the individual trade vendors is far superior to a centralized market. If only we could fix people.

SerafinaWaterstar · March 2022

It has been pointed out numerous times that this gold inflation is only affecting PC - consoles are fine.

So do not mess around with something that works for a large percentage of players. The majority of suggestions here would be detrimental to console players that do not have your problems.

Maybe you need to work out *why* this is happening on PC before finding a solution, hmm?

Necrotech_Master · March 2022

Runefang wrote: »

dvonpm wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

dvonpm wrote: »

Just a reminder for anyone complaining about inflation and guild dues.

You can

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

Carrying on from @Tommy_The_Gun 's thinking, basically there is a whole segment of the player base who will not use the current selling mechanics but who, if they did have access to the selling side of the economy, would contribute vastly to increasing the supply of items, at which point you could expect the price of more common materials to become more sane relative to what they are used for AND you could plug those players into the economy so that they did not experience so much inflation.

For whatever reason, ZOS has made clear multiple times that a central auction house is not going to be a thing and the guild traders are here to stay. So be it.

But why not an auction house minus?

- You have "emporia" or something at various key cities, or even at bad locations, that are functionally similar to guild stores but are *open to every player and nothing to do with guilds*.

- Each player gets a very limited number of selling slots to stop the emporia completely overtaking the guild stores that ZOS want to preserve.

- If you like, sales at emporia attract a tax to disadvantage them compared to guild stores.

I do not think guild stores are a good idea, least of all for a game like ESO which deliberately courted and courts a non-diehard MMO playerbase. But, plainly, the view is that they are sacred. But the game really, really needs a mechanic to allow players who want nothing to do with guild stores to sell.

Whole game mechanics depend on the player economy to work properly. Most obviously housing and the crafting of furnishings have been aimed at single players and fail the fun test if it takes players literally years to do what they are trying to do. If they fail the fun test, people will stop playing. And while it might seem terribly clever to charge the equivalent of over 70 pounds (in the UK) to someone for a house and then drive them to the Crown store to spend 5 pounds a pop on plants, it isn't in the end. It's exploitative, players will not engage with it and will resent it, and those players will leave.

Spamming zone chat with "WTS" is a joke solution to the problem.

OK, I am going to give this an honest effort. For this idea to work the emporium(s) need to be inferior to guild traders in multiple ways so that it doesn't interfere with how they function. Also, for this to work there has to be strong limits or it could crash the game. So how about we say this.

30 item listing limit per week per account. Items once listed can not be canceled for 3 days. Items expire at 14 days.

To sell in the emporium you must pay a flat fee of 100k gold weekly.

Listing fee is 14% of the sale price, none of which is returned upon cancelation.

Fees and gold are removed from the game.

Something along these lines. Are conditions that would need to be met. The guild stores need to have an appeal to them and on the other side the system would need to be able to limit how many players can sell, how much, and the frequency. The very real reason for this is that too much of it at once will crash the system. It's something that needs to be addressed before venturing outside of the established system.

while this is an interesting idea, this is just another example of how it would cut out "the poor player"

if you cant afford to "rent" your emporium slot, you would still be relegated to "WTS" zone spam anyway

i see this as almost the exact same thing as a guilds that demand dues to join (which i also greatly dislike)

I mean, those dues are a gold sink. It's just that your guilds have to wheedle it out of you by begging for it.

How are guilds supposed to cover 20-60 million bids per week if no one pays for it?

Raffles, auctions, and 3.5% taxes from sales don't cover it and I'm not sure how fair it is to ask a few of us to continually struggle to cover these costs so you don't have to experience the sinking of your gold while reaping the benefits of a costly trading spot.

im not saying i like the whole trader bidding process either, actually i would also prefer the global auction house style system and just have to pay the fees to list the item

because of TTC, i feel the actual trader spot is less relevant as long as someone in the guild uses TTC to scan and upload it so someone searching could find it

i remember back in the day when there was NO traders and you could only sell "in house"

i usually on avg make around 50-100k a day combined from the 5 guilds im in (at least 1 does not regularly have a trader), this totals to around 400-500k total for a trading week so im not like getting super rich quick (usually about 200-300k coming from 1 guild, and in this same guild there are people who sell 10 million gold worth of items every week, and i always wonder how do they sell that much unless they are either A) a flipper, B ) spend most of their time farming "new" drops like the fargrave designs being the latest "new" thing)

if i had to eat 100k of my profits every week just buying a trade slot, i would probably just stop selling stuff entirely and just turn into a hoarder (i dislike WTS spam so i dont do that kind of thing)

[snip]

In theory I eat a full 1-1.5 million of my profits every week to put toward our trader bids and I usually only sell about 2 million on a good week. Hence my desire to scream into voids when I see people complaining about not having enough sinks, because I could seriously use some help!

Gold sinks work best when its forced on players, people don't want to voluntarily give up gold. Double the tax for using the trader, I honestly wouldn't notice and it wouldn't stop me using a trader.

personally i think i would be fine if they just increased the tax amount (or if it was possible even allow a slider to go from a minimum of what it is now, up to some maximum to basically allow more of your profit to be donated to your guild)

that to me would make more sense to me

Reaver999 · April 2022

If you dont sell in a guild trader you just won't have the same amount of gold as others that do. there is plenty of gold to be made in the game and not taking part in the economy creates limitations. Sure people with mass amounts of gold flip, but most players farm or just sell valuable things they come across. If you feel you don't have enough gold, learn to sell better, ask questions, look online, and join a trading guild. There is also the option of farming what you need for yourself. There are plenty of farming routes and activities that can net 200k+ an hour (conservative aprox. PC/NA) if you know where to farm, how to price, and you sell in a trader. If you don't know what to sell, start with mats, reasonably priced mats always sell. There are also content creators like @Arttea that have videos on youtube about farming, selling, and maximizing profit. Just like irl, if you don't want to take part in the hustle, that's cool and up to you, but you will simply not have the gold that others do and you won't be able to afford luxury items. Most necessities in the game are very affordable but gold gear should be something that is worked toward, gold weapons are more important than anything and as of right now those mats are priced reasonably. The economy is a player driven element of the game and if you don't play it you'll find yourself broke.

Sylvermynx · April 2022

Reaver999 wrote: »

If you dont sell in a guild trader you just won't have the same amount of gold as others that do. there is plenty of gold to be made in the game and not taking part in the economy creates limitations. Sure people with mass amounts of gold flip, but most players farm or just sell valuable things they come across. If you feel you don't have enough gold, learn to sell better, ask questions, look online, and join a trading guild. There is also the option of farming what you need for yourself. There are plenty of farming routes and activities that can net 200k+ an hour (conservative aprox. PC/NA) if you know where to farm, how to price, and you sell in a trader. If you don't know what to sell, start with mats, reasonably priced mats always sell. There are also content creators like @Arttea that have videos on youtube about farming, selling, and maximizing profit. Just like irl, if you don't want to take part in the hustle, that's cool and up to you, but you will simply not have the gold that others do and you won't be able to afford luxury items. Most necessities in the game are very affordable but gold gear should be something that is worked toward, gold weapons are more important than anything and as of right now those mats are priced reasonably. The economy is a player driven element of the game and if you don't play it you'll find yourself broke.

Hmm. Well.... I have about 4M on each of two account on both PC megaservers. Yeah yeah, that's not a lot.... except I really don't have anything much to spend that on.

And I've never bothered with the - um - "preferred mode for selling" in this game. I have zero use for guilds. SO not my thing. And having to join guilds just to turn over stuff that others *might* want to buy.... Nope. Not hap'nin. Nor is WTS in chat.

Works for me.